


Arms of the Sea

by LadyJanelly



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, M/M, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5351831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyJanelly/pseuds/LadyJanelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie gives her back to the sea when she dies, three years into their marriage, their baby still inside her. He sews her up in sailcloth with the porridge pot she brought from her mother’s house, a stone from their shared hearth, scaling knife, thimble and needle. He sails out to the deep water and lowers her into the water, weeps as she sinks into the ocean’s embrace.</p><p>He sails back to land and gives his boat to his brother. He will not return to the ocean. It is a graveyard to him now.</p><p>He finds a job in a logging camp, and for a year his feet are dry, his lips do not taste of salt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arms of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure this adds anything at all to the merman genre, or if my execution of the concept is dull and pretentious. Warnings for ambiguous ending, suffering both man-made and natural. Psedo-colonial-era setting. Mention of whaling. Themes of mourning and hints of suicidal thoughts, lose of a spouse and unborn child. If you see anything else that needs a warning, please let me know. 
> 
> From this prompt by stars1491-hockey-fanfiction:
> 
> Would you be up for an angsty merman!tyler, human!Jamie fic?
> 
> Like, someone in the town realizes Jamie had befriended Tyler, and uses that friendship to capture Tyler, either to experiment on, or to put in an aquarium. And Jamie has to find a way to get Tyler out of there.
> 
> —

Jamie is a young man when he marries—strong and brave, a fisherman with his own boat. He’s known as a man who is gentle and kind, slow to temper but fiercely protective of kin and friend alike. She is a pretty girl from up the coast, shy and sweet. There are prettier girls, but Jamie does all he can to make her feel beautiful, make her feel it’s not her fault he has such struggles doing his husbandly duty. He’s not in love with her, but he does love her. 

He gives her back to the sea when she dies, three years into their marriage, their baby still inside her. He sews her up in sailcloth with the porridge pot she brought from her mother’s house, a stone from their shared hearth, scaling knife, thimble and needle. He sails out to the deep water and lowers her into the water, weeps as she sinks into the ocean’s embrace.

He sails back to land and gives his boat to his brother. He will not return to the ocean. It is a graveyard to him now.

He finds a job in a logging camp, and for a year his feet are dry, his lips do not taste of salt. 

The little cottage on the shore is no longer his, but he knows the beachline, and he ends up there, drunk and still grieving, sorrow for a woman who was better to him than he ever deserved, mourning his own lost chance of normality. 

The new owner of the cottage has a rowboat out there, and he thinks he’ll go visit her. Share a sip from his bottle with her. 

It has been a year since Jamie felt the waves rolling beneath him, but his body remembers, and he rows, out into the quiet sea. Drinks his whiskey and leans over the edge of the boat to trail his fingers in the becalmed waters, smooth and cool like her hair had been. 

He feels a touch, a brush from under the water, light and curious and he startles. Stares down into the depths, wondering if he’s lost his mind, or if her ghost is returning his caress, saying goodbye in her own way. 

Just a fish, he thinks. The moon is high, and he can’t see anything below. He tips his head back, takes another swig. He looks back out across the water, and this time he sees something. A boy, a man, floating on his back, arms spread, head tipped back. He is beautiful, high cheekbones and sharp chin. Muscled shoulders with trails of dark lines and swirls. He is the sin Jamie has tried his life to avoid. 

He is watching Jamie, and it occurs to him that no man could swim so far from shore, from the faint glint of the lighthouse on the far horizon. A ship wouldn’t wreck, out on the open ocean, but one might sink. 

He should do something. He should help. 

“Hey,” he calls, voice rough with cheap booze, with disuse. The man twists in the water, turns to meet Jamie’s eyes. He smiles, tentative and strange. His eyes glint silver in the moonlight.

“C’mere,” Jamie says, waves the man over. 

He ducks under the water instead, coming up further away. 

“No,” Jamie pleads. “No, come here. Look. You’re far from shore. You’re gonna drown.” 

The man swims closer, hair dark and wet back from his face. He slips under the water again, and Jamie’s heart lurches. He cannot die, here in this place where Jamie laid his wife to rest. Jamie cannot let the man die, and he reaches for him. The boat rocks under his weight. Wobbles and tips. The water is cold, closing over his head, pushing into his lungs. 

Jamie is drowning. The man’s fingers touch him; his arms wrap around his chest. He can’t tell up from down. Can’t tell if he’s being lifted to the surface or dragged to the depths. He panics, struggles against the man’s strength.

================

Jamie wakes up on the beach, gulls crying at the dawn. The little rowboat he had borrowed bobs in the bay. He wades out and pulls it in. The man who lives there now gives him a sympathetic look, doesn’t complain about him taking the boat.

Jamie walks the six miles to his brother’s place. Jordie looks…relieved to see him. “You done with trees?” he asks. They are fisherfolk. It never pleased him that Jamie had left the sea. 

Jamie thinks about it. “Yeah. You got any work for me?”

Jordie shakes his head. “It’s your boat, Jamie. I was just keeping it for you.” Jordie has a wife of his own, three children to provide for. The gift of Jamie’s boat has brought them new prosperity, and Jamie will not take that away again.

“I’ll take her out at night, fish by lantern.” 

Jordie rolls his eyes, and hugs Jamie tight around his shoulders. “Whatever you say.” 

Jordie hires a carpenter from town to add a small room to his crowded little house, and Jamie moves his scant possessions there. Sleeps during the days with the happy sounds of family around him. He imagines what it would have been, his own child laughing, his own wife chiding and scolding and teasing, voice filled with love. 

He sails at night, and the air is cool, crisp. He comes home with a full basket for the morning market, but he doesn’t see the man in the water.

Weeks pass. Jamie should be saving the money he earns, to buy a home and his own boat, to prepare a life that will welcome a new wife. He gives most of his earnings to Jordie, for the cost of building his little room, for the food Jordie’s wife makes him, for her neat stitches holding his worn garments together. 

The rest he spends on small trinkets, a string of beads, a wooden fish covered in tiny tin scales, a little brass bell. When his night is done and his nets full, he will lean over the edge of the boat, trail his fingers in the water and offer the gifts. He holds out the beads and tells himself it is gratitude, for his life, for a chance to see that he needs to start anew. 

He tells himself that he is not courting this man of the sea, this beautiful and strange man that may have only been a drunken fool’s dream.

A slim pale hand slides into his, plucks the beads from his grip. Jamie startles and nearly falls out of the boat again. He looks down, into laughing silver eyes reflecting the glow of his lantern, lips twisted with mirth. The man twists in the water, and the silvery tail of a giant fish flips a thin spray of water over Jamie. 

He stares for a long time after the ripples have faded into the waves. He doesn’t know if he is mad, blessed or cursed.

=============

“Where have you been sinking anchor?” Jordie asks one morning, as he helps Jamie unload the night’s haul. “Have you found some secret cove and not shared it with me?” 

He is teasing, but Jamie shakes his head. “I just go out. West of the lighthouse.”

“There’s nothing there,” Jordie protests.

Jamie shrugs. “Maybe not in the daytime.”

=============

A marriage offer comes, a widowed woman with a young son. Jamie turns it down in the gentlest way he knows.

Jordie takes him to the tavern for a drink that night.

“You have to let her go,” he says, and Jamie hangs his head, that there is no other way to explain his unwillingness to take the next steps of life. 

“Jilly wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”

“I am content,” Jamie says. 

He takes the bottle home from their table. He thinks the man in the water will enjoy it.

============

Jamie is tending his net, pulling up great numbers of trapped cod, and he doesn’t see when the shell appears on the edge of the bow. He notices it when he turns the tiller for home, a great ornate thing like he’s never seen, white and pink, with spines down the back and sides of it, pointed at one end and curled at the other. It is a treasure, and he stares at it with wonder, runs his fingers over the deceptively strong crenelations. 

“Thank you!” he calls to the sea. A slap, tail-fins on water, is all the reply he gets.

===========

“Witchcraft,” one of the fishermen mutters in the market, and Jamie ignores him. More of the folk are taking to casting their nets at night, but none is near as successful as Jamie. Half his night now is spent avoiding their lanterns, trying to find a quiet place to trail his fingers in the water, to call the man to him. 

The man brings him some creature from the depths, a foot long, with snapping claws and a curved tail. Like the little crabs that dwell in the tidal pools but elongated. Two long antennae waggle in Jamie’s direction, and then the man brings it to his mouth, bites down in the largest part of the shell and pulls it apart, sips from the bowl of it’s armor and offers it up to Jamie.

“No. I. Thank you.” 

He brings bread, the next time he sails, and the man takes it, imitates the bite Jamie took of it, but then makes a disgusted face and spits it out. 

“I won’t bring you any cake then,” Jamie decides. The man cocks his head, dips a little, encouraging. 

“You like it when I talk?” Jamie asks, and the man smiles, fingers tracing his own lips like he is puzzling out the art of speaking.

“Do you know you’re beautiful?” Jamie asks, but the man just smiles back at him, not comprehending his words.

============

Jamie wakes at the dinner hour, helps Jordie drag his catch of the day in from the shore. They sit together, gutting fish and hanging them up to dry. 

“A man in the market said he heard you, out on the ocean,” Jordie says. 

Jamie frowns.

“Heard me what?”

“Talking. Words carry over the water. He said you were in love with the sea.” Jordie frowns. “There is talk. About your success at night. Jamie, be careful.”

============

Jamie is careful, but he cannot see far in the night, blinded by the glow of his own lantern. He doesn’t see the other boats, powered by muffled oars, until they are upon him, surrounding him. 

Men cross into his hull, crowding the small boat. One has a small curved gutting knife. 

“Call to her!” they tell him, and he frowns. 

“Call who?” 

“The ghost of your wife, who brings you such fortune. Tell her to share your catches with us.”

“My wife is dead,” Jamie says, and the words still hurt. “She brings no fish, no fortune I can direct.”

“Your mermaid then,” one of the boys says, holding the tie rope to Jamie’s boat, keeping it close to the others.

“Are you mad?” Jamie asks, but terror is growing in his chest. He sees a harpoon, old and rusted, from the days when the whales were plentiful and the smell of their grease being melted was a background to his childhood memories.

“We are neighbors! Friends!” Jamie calls, but he is not. Has not reforged those ties he sundered when he left for the woods. He sleeps the day and works the night, and these men have forgotten the man he was.

One of them grabs his left arm, and another takes hold of the right. There is little struggling he can do without dumping them all into the water, so far from shore. 

“Stop! Stop!” he begs, but they bend him over the side of the boat, hold his head below the surface of the water. He struggles and kicks, but he can find no purchase.

They pull him up, coughing and choking. He hears a slap, out on the water, and knows the man is close; the man is in danger.

The put his head under the water and this time he doesn’t fight. He twists and kicks, tries to throw himself into the ocean, but a man grabs his leg and another his jacket and they pull him back.

“Have you lost your mind?” a man asks, horrified at what Jamie tried to do, but another cries “I see her! I see her! She’s here!” and there is no time to answer.

The man cuts through the water, a pale silver shadow beneath the boats, the lanterns reflecting off of the scales of his tail. 

“There! There!” the boy cries.

“Go! Leave!” Jamie shouts, but the man lingers. Searching, Jamie thinks, for a way to save him. 

“There!” the boy cries, and the harpoon is thrust down, between the hulls of the boats. The rope attached to it pulls taut as the man below the water tries to outswim the pain of it.

“I got it! I got it!” the harpooner shouts, and Jamie cries in anguish. 

The men holding him kick him to the bottom of his boat, cudgel him until there is no fight left in him. Then all of them work to get ropes and nets around their struggling prey, trapped by the barbs of the harpoon. Jamie sees one glimpse of a wild and terrified face as they load the man into one of their boats. 

They slash Jamie’s sail and leave him adrift, bleeding and aching with a single oar to get him home. 

==============

Jordie is waiting when Jamie paddles his way back to shore. The sun is halfway to noon.

“Where is he?” Jamie asks, his lips cracked with sun and salt. His canteen of fresh water had fallen over in the struggle.

“They took him to town,” Jordie answers, unsurprised by the question. “Are you well?”

Jamie shakes his head. 

“Come inside. I’ll have Magda stitch your head. You’re bleeding.” 

Jamie raises his hand to the wound. He hadn’t noticed it in his haste to get back.

“Was he alive? They. There was a harpoon.”

Jordie frowns. “They were struggling to carry it, wrapped up in sailcloth. It was fighting, but there was blood, red as yours, soaking through. They made a tank, from a vintner’s barrel. It won’t be big enough for a man to swim, but it should be wet enough.”

Jamie shakes his head, not sure if that will work, if it’ll be enough to keep the man alive. “I need to go. Help him.”

“Jamie,” Jordie says, slow and serious. “There’s nothing to be gained by rushing in now. They’ve sent a runner to the governor. They won’t let you take it from under their noses.”

Jamie takes a step towards town anyway, but he stumbles, falters. Jordie grabs him and turns him back towards the cottage. 

“Listen. Hide today. Wait until most of them are asleep. We’ll go tonight, and take him back to the sea.”

Magda tends to Jamie’s wounds, and Jordie takes the torn sail from the boat, sews with neat stitches, pushing the heavy needle through with a thick thimble on the palm of his hand. 

Jamie goes as far as the edge of town, a hood up to hide his face. He sees the tank, holes cut into it and glass panes set in with tar. Something is moving inside, agitated. He’s too far away, the tank too dark to see more than that.

Hold on, he thinks. Don’t die. I’m coming.

=============

There are three men awake when Jamie and Jordie come down, hours after nightfall. Jamie clubs one, and Jordie the other, and the third they pile upon from behind, and muffle, tie him up and gag his mouth. Jamie climbs a box that’s next to the barrel, and peers down into the dark depths. 

“Hey,” he calls, “Hey, are you alright?” He trails his fingertips across the water, and a pale hand reaches up, grabs his wrist with crushing strength. 

Jamie doesn’t struggle, even when the grip pull draws him towards the water. If he is to drown here, he deserves it, for being so foolish as to lead the villagers to someone so precious.

The man breaks the surface, looking up at Jamie, anger in his eyes, softening to confusion and pain. He reaches his other hand up, traces Jamie’s lips. His touch is as cold as the sea, salty from the water they’ve put him in.

“We’re going to get you out of here,” Jamie whispers. Hopes that his tone gets across more than language does. 

The man pulls himself up, one hand on Jamie’s wrist, the other on the edge of the tank. Leans in and presses his chilly lips to Jamie’s warm ones. It is not a kiss like he once shared with Jilly, but it sparks a fire deep in him, reinforces the desperate desire to survive this, to see the man survive this.

“Hurry,” Jordie hisses behind him, and Jamie calls the man closer to him, reaches down in the water and scoops him out. He is heavier than Jamie had expected, human-seeming from head to hips, fishlike below that, a twisting, finned, serpentine tail that is as long as Jamie is tall. The wound of the harpoon is horrible to look upon, deep and ragged where the villagers must have had to cut the barbs away. It is not a weapon ever intended to bring in live prey.

They lay him in the sling Jordie sewed, heavy sailcloth and a loop for each of them to carry the weight across their shoulders. The man’s eyes close, his body goes limp, trusting or just exhausted, Jamie cannot tell.

It is a long march to the sea. Jordie is panting and Jamie aching by the time they get there. They wade straight into the ocean, into the incoming waves breaking on the shore. The sling fills with water, sagging heavy on their shoulders. The man inside stirs as the water rushes around him. Jamie and Jordie lift the straps off over their heads, undo the ties that held the sling closed.

The man reaches up, touches Jamie’s face one last time, wriggles free and is gone.

=============

 

Jamie watches until the man swims away, the silver ridge of his tail, marred by the harpoon wound, the last he sees.

“I have to go,” Jamie says. “Tell them I never made it back to shore. Tell them you saw an army of mermen come from the ocean, grow legs and save their prince.” It’s a ridiculous story, but the boundary of fantasy and reality has been well-breached in the last day.

“You can’t go empty-handed,” Jordie says. He and Magda load on all the food they can spare, casks of fresh water from their spring, packs of dried fish that had been meant for the market.

“There’s money,” Jamie says. It’s not much, just enough for the courting trinkets he’d been buying from the market. Everything else he had he has given Jordie already.

“We will be fine,” Jordie tells him. “Go. Before they come looking for you.”

Jamie climbs in the boat. The sail is in tatters by his feet. He’ll have to mend it when he has more time. He rows out into the surf, tilting with the waves. It will not be easy for his brother, but over time he should be able to convince them he had nothing to do with the loss of their prize. 

Jamie rows to the deep water, into the red glow of the sunrise. 

He plans to row until land is a smudge on the horizon, turn south and hope to find another village, fifty miles down the coast or more. 

The storm catches him before noon, stinging rain that stings his hands and face as he clings to the rudder, trying to keep the boat pointed into the waves, struggles to keep the boat from flipping, from filling with water.

==========

He rides the storm out, until the rain is gentle and the wind no longer threatens to swamp the boat. He sleeps then, wet and cold and utterly exhausted. He wakes thirsty, with the sun high.

The turmoil of the storm has broken one of his casks of water, and the other is leaking. He drinks enough to bring the water level below the crack, and lays the cask so that no more will go to waste. He shades his eyes with his hand, searching for land, but there is nothing but ocean, as far as he can see.

Jamie has lived his life upon the water, and he doesn’t panic. Not yet. He needs to repair the sail, and wait for night, for the stars. He starts his work, eats little because the salt of the dried fish will make his thirst more dire. 

Night falls, and he knows the way. If he sails east, he will hit land eventually. The breeze is pitiful though, barely enough to ruffle the sail, like the sky has run out of breath with the effort of blowing the storm. 

Jamie sleeps in the day, in the shadow of the sail. He rations his water. Does all the right things. He finally, finally sees land, but he is too weak to row. Even if he could, he would have to be so lucky as to land right next to a freshwater stream flowing into the ocean for it to matter, for it to change anything other than the scenery for his death. 

He tries to think, what point he could have done something different. Where he would have changed is course if he had this journey to make all over again. He still would have gone with Jordie to rescue the man from the tank. Would have chosen their strange association over not-knowing the man from the sea. There is no decision he would unmake, that he would alter, even though those choices have brought him to his death.

There’s only one thing he still wants, and he rolls over, struggles to prop himself up by the side of the boat. Reaches over and lets his fingertips trail through the water. He closes his eyes. He sighs, content.

Cool fingers reach up from the sea. Slide against Jamie’s and then grip his wrist. Jamie pushes with his feet, up and over the edge of the boat and into waiting arms.


End file.
